Report: Regents right to take back pay raises

Linda Conner Lambeck

Published 9:34 pm, Thursday, December 27, 2012

Former Board of Regents President Robert Kennedy speaks with Gov. Dannel Malloy during a tour of Housatonic Community College's new Regional Advanced Manufacturing Center Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012.
Photo: Autumn Driscoll

Washington-based Owen-Pottier Inc. released the 16-page report this week. The firm examined the appropriateness of 17 of the 21 pay raises Kennedy granted without knowledge or approval of the full Board of Regents for Higher Education.

The raises were particularly galling to many because Gov. Dannel P. Malloy convinced the Legislature that merging the state's community college system and state universities into a single agency under Kennedy would help cut overhead and put more money into hiring professors. A subsequent state budget deficit has since erased any hope of that happening.

Kennedy resigned this fall when news broke of the raises, which totaled nearly $300,000. The scandal also cost Board of Regents' Executive Vice President Michael Meotti his job.

A long-time state employee and second in command for the new agency, Meotti had been granted a $48,000 pay raise, which would have brought his salary to $232,000.

The report was produced by a Washington-based firm that has done work for the state's community colleges and universities in the past. It will be presented to the board when it meets at 10 a.m. Jan. 17 in Hartford.

The report indicates that top staff in the merged community college and state university college system have taken on added tasks and duties. Even so, the workload increases alone do not justify pay raises, the document concludes.

"We agreed to recommend to the full board that the (raises) continue to be suspended until we do phase two of our research," said Naomi K. Cohen, chairwoman of a special regents committee to develop policies related to system positions and compensation.

Cohen said the report which, cost about $10,000, was necessary to help the committee understand how the pay raises were determined.

Employees were asked to fill out surveys describing their duties and were assigned points that allowed classification comparisons with similar positions in comparable higher institutions. The salaries, before the increases, were deemed to be "highly competitive."

Bye said the study is what Kennedy should have done from the start.

"It wasn't up to him to determine compensation," she said.

State Rep. Roberta Willis, the other higher education co-chair, said there are many positions in state government that are not being refilled as employees leave or retire. So it stands to reason, she said, that remaining staff are being asked to do more without additional wages.

There was one exception noted in the report.

Braden Hosch, the system's director of policy and research, is also serving as director of academic affairs since the system was unable to find someone suitable to take on the second job.

As such, the $24,000 per year in extra compensation is being called a temporary stipend that will disappear when someone is hired for the second role, said Colleen Flanagan, a spokeswoman for the system.

Cohen said once the report is presented to the board, a recommendation will be made to do a compensation study of all non-classified workers in the system.